The blog for RocketWheel, the leaders in Video Content Marketing.

Menu

Trimming the fat. We do it to meat, we do it to our diets and organizations and governments try to do it to their budgets.

When it comes to explainer videos, we need to trim the excess fat from scripts. This isn’t just because of our shrinking attention spans. That’s a factor, but we should want our scripts to be lean and mean because it makes for better videos.

My friend, screenwriter and screenwriting instructor, Madeline DiMaggio, always tells her students that when writing for television, every word needs to count and must move the story forward. If it’s true in television, it’s even more so in explainer videos. Continue reading →

In our increasingly fast-paced, 24/7, information-driven world, making a good first impression is more important than ever when it comes to our online presence.

When we look at a webpage, for example, we’re making conscious and unconscious judgments about what we see. Is there too much information crammed onto a page? Are there too many colors? Not enough color? Is it easy to navigate around the page or between pages? Do the links work properly? We’re shaping our opinions about the page, and by extention, the company, instantly. As I mentioned in a previous post, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter so if you want to grab and hold someone’s attention, you have to do it fast. Continue reading →

We sometimes hear the following question when talking to potential clients:

“Is the cost of a video really worth it?

Obviously, we’re biased because we create videos every day and see how they help bring a client’s product or service to life. But, we also understand that to those not in the business of making videos, it’s not always easy to see their value as compared to other marketing spends.

So, in an effort to answer this question, we’ve compiled some statistics that we hope will help. Continue reading →

I always tell people that I have the patience of a gnat on crack. I fully admit that patience is not one of my virtues. My impatience got me thinking about my attention span and how it seems to have declined as I’ve gotten older.

Do you remember those reading comprehension tests from school? I used to do really well on them but now, I don’t retain information the way I used to. Is this just the product of aging or is societal change a factor?

I came across this article that says that our attention spans have shortened since the year 2000 from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. We’ve been passed up by the goldfish. Our friendly bowl dwellers come in with an attention span of 9 seconds. Wow. Continue reading →

French painter Henri Matisse once said, “Creativity takes courage”. We live in a “copycat” world. When something works, whether it’s a TV show, a new technology or a business philosophy, it’s copied and copied until the creativity we liked originally is long gone.

Copying success is understandable because straying from the “tried and true” is dangerous. If you fail, you can lose money, reputation, and influence. But if you really want to make a difference in your business and grow, you have to take a risk on creativity.

Here at RocketWheel, we understand the delicate balance between thinking “outside the box” and “coloring within the lines”. We don’t push any client to be “artsy” for art’s sake. We know that you’re running a business not an art school. Our goal is to create unique videos that tell a client’s story in an entertaining and informative way. This is one of the reasons why we love “hybrid” videos so much and so do our clients. A hybrid video is one that combines different video styles within one video. Not only is this approach visually more engaging, it provides you with more ways to tell your story. Continue reading →

If your content marketing strategy resembles this cartoon, step away from the white paper you’ve just uploaded and spend a few minutes with me.

All content is not the same. This may seem obvious in theory, but in practice, many companies seem to have a “one content fits all” approach. To deliver your message successfully, you have to realize that writing for video and writing for print are not one and the same.

There are two main concepts to keep in mind when writing a video script:

We all know what bad communication looks and sounds like. How we communicate with people in our personal and professional lives is a crucial component to creating successful relationships.

At RocketWheel, we take communication very seriously and it starts from our first interaction with a potential client. If we’ve been contacted by email or via the contact form on our website, we try to set up a call with the prospective client right away. This isn’t a sneaky ploy to do some kind of hard sell. We want to get to know the person who has contacted us and see how we can help tell their story. Sure, we can email a price list with some samples and a brief overview of our process, and we often do this. But this can be a bit impersonal. Someone contacts us because they have a passion for their product or service. By talking one-on-one, we can find out more about them than we can in an email. In the process, we’re able to provide a more accurate quote for the video and answer any questions. And the potential client gets a better feel for who we are and how we can help communicate their passion. Continue reading →